A "Wrecked" Opportunity?

Yet another historic shipwreck has been discovered and heavily plundered off the coast of Vietnam (Quang Ngai Province), the third since 1998. Thanh Nien News reports that towards the end of June, about 30 boats full of "treasure hunters" rushed over to plunder the shallow wreck; unfortunately discovered no more than 100 meters from the coast and 1.5m deep (more news here).

The seabed around the clusters of likely c. 16th-17th century blue-on-white ceramics discovered has also been dredged and disturbed in the hunt for more artifacts, thereby revealing some of the wreck itself, but also destroying vital archaeological context regarding site formation and taphonomy. There is even testimony to the effect that axes and crowbars were used to free individual artifacts from the wreck as quickly as possible, smashing other pieces in the process!

Fortunately, police have allegedly been on patrol since last Friday morning and a southern Vietnamese "salvage" company was contracted out to conduct an excavation of what remained (see photo above left). The trajectory of discovery, looting, patrol, and "salvage" that occurred for this wreck is very similar to that which occurred for another c. 13th-14th century wreck in the area.

The merits of approaching a salvage company (headed by a known antiquities collector...), as opposed to an organization devoted to maritime archaeology such as the Vietnam Maritime Archaeology Project Centre (full disclosure: colleagues of mine), is open to debate. I'd assume it's just a question of time and money, as always.

Here's hoping that authorities will have better luck recovering looted items this time around, but how many are destined for international markets as opposed to local collections is anyone's guess. Vietnamese heritage law would theoretically prevent their export (search for Vietnam here), but enforcement and detection is another matter. With the likely upcoming expansion of Dung Quat port, time is running out to decide what to do with these wreck; remove it or preserve it in-situ as a tourist attraction? Given that other wrecks from different time periods remain unexcavated (but already looted?), how authorities deal with this situation will set important precedent. Stay tuned...  

"Other People's Treasure" on the High Seas

It seems that, according to this article (also here), hundreds of artifacts from "dozens" of Spice Route-era shipwrecks (c. 1500-1800AD) off of the Tanjung Tuan coast, Malaysia, have been stolen by illicit underwater looters (here read 'salvagers') since the 1990s. What really struck me about these short articles, however, was that on the one hand, the Museum Authority was asked by the state government to gather more information for prosecutions, but on the other, the government itself tried to offer (bribe?) salvage companies to retrieve further artifacts, with the deal most likely to include the local retention of some finds, but the open sale of others (as the full-scale salvage of a single wreck was not the stated goal, unlike the controversial Javanese shipwreck whose artifacts might soon be displayed by the Smithsonian). What maritime excavation methodologies do any of the solicited companies employ? Any regards to context preservation? Nothing is stated.

The article implies that the most active salvage companies or private small enterprises already knew that the wrecks in question have been picked clean. As the time, effort and money involved to 'loot' underwater is far beyond "subsistence digging," the issue to me seems to be one of how to define "national treasure" in the case of high seas 'salvaging?' The people involved were locals of a specific ethnicity (Malay or Chinese-Malay in this case), and the artifacts removed came out of near-shore (i.e. not "international") waters. However, their shipwreck context indicates that such objects recovered from cargo holds were collected and transported far and wide in antiquity. If sold, would pieces such as the Chinese blue and white porcelain (see photo above left) go to a) local Malay dealers; b) non-Malay dealers from countries such as China, people who might see no problem profiting from the sale of "treasure" originally made within the former or current boarders of their country, or c) Western dealers and buyers seeking to cash in on possibly romanticized stories of arduous long distance trade voyages in the time of sail ships and pirates? Each of the parties mentioned above could stake a different claim on anything 'salvaged' from these wrecks, but at the end of the day, looting is still looting when insufficient care is given to archaeological context, no matter how it's dressed up or couched in nationalistic terms.